


In the Beginning

by ImprobableDreams900



Series: Eden!verse [7]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Backstory, Creation, Gen, Heaven, the ineffable plan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 16:22:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11627292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImprobableDreams900/pseuds/ImprobableDreams900
Summary: God has some spare time and decides to create the universe. Then things go off script...





	In the Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> To be read after [Chapter 23](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11408583/chapters/26145495) of [_The Inheritance of Eden_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11408583/chapters/25554486). There are significant spoilers for Eden!verse otherwise.
> 
> If you've finished _The Inheritance of Eden_ and are looking for the next piece in the series, either click "next work" or [right here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16550093/chapters/38773742) to be taken to _The Redemption of Eden_.

 

“But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?” _–Mark Twain_

 

* * *

  

In the Beginning, there was a very big Bang. The Universe exploded into being in a burst of Light, and God decided to set some ground rules straightaway, before things got out of hand.

Quarks and leptons were flying past very quickly, and it was beginning to give God the mother of all headaches, so He decided, perhaps a tad arbitrarily, that nothing should exceed the velocity of Light.

Next, He created two forces, one that attracted matter and one that repulsed it. There were other forces as well, pulling particles of matter together in different ways, and an arrow of time that only moved forward, but it was the first two forces that worried God the most.

God was omniscient, which meant that He knew and saw All. Not just the present and the past (so far not a particularly impressive feat), but the future as well. Every possible future this grand Universe of His could unfold into was spread out in His mind, positively sparkling with potential. Even as He watched, many of the universes in the multiverse stuttered and blinked out early due to an imbalance in the two forces recently on His mind. God had just created His Universe, but He had already become a little attached despite Himself, and having it collapse in on itself so soon was just no fun at all.

So He brought the repulsing and attracting forces into harmony, equalling them in strength. Everything went a little pear-shaped for a moment and then smoothed out. The universes in His mind that ended in a colossal Crunch vanished, as did the ones where everything inflated infinitely, expanding until all energy evaporated and the universe became cold and dark.

Now the universe of His present choice extended in front of Him, and it would exist for the longest possible time, without any pesky cosmological apocalypses. He saw with some disappointment that He had inadvertently invented entropy, meaning that eventually even this universe would fall apart, but that would take many, _many_ eons, and He could always start over again with a new universe after that.

Matter was taking far too long to coalesce into anything interesting, so God turned the clock forward, jumping ahead nine billion years. Stars exploded and imploded around Him, and the speck of dust He had been sitting on coalesced into a planet.

God took a minute to admire what His new forces had created and saw that the tiny particles of the early seconds of Creation had built themselves into more complex compounds. This would be where He would do His work, He decided. The planet was pleasant enough, situated near a newborn star and close to the edge of a massive flat disc of matter.

God took another moment to inspect the universe He had created, and adjusted a few things here and there—nebulas grew brighter and more beautiful, the gently-forming black hole in the middle of the flat disc deepened (it was fascinating, what the attracting force had done where the fourth dimension was concerned), and He gave the edge of the galaxy a spin with a single finger. It wound itself into a gorgeous spiral.

The star burning closest to what God was beginning to think of as His planet was stuttering and considering dying, so He touched it and it began burning brighter. It would now last for billions of years. The solar system seemed a little sparse, so He swept a few more wandering planets into the star’s gravitational influence. He thought that, even with the additional company, His planet might be a little lonely, so He brought a passing protoplanet into orbit and slammed it into His planet. Debris filled the planet’s orbit and God formed it into a moon.

He turned time ahead a little further and saw that the solar system had ordered itself nicely. His planet was spinning calmly, and He saw that if He stood upon its surface, there would be a period of light and a period of dark. He called the former ‘day’ and the latter ‘night.’

God spread water over the surface of the planet, but noticed with a frown that it always froze when it reached the shadowed side, so He cocooned the planet in an atmosphere to moderate its temperature and keep it safe from the high-energy rays emitted by the star.

God condensed His form and stepped down upon the planet He had created, wishing to see it up close. He stood upon the water and decided it might be nice if He could stand somewhere without getting wet, so He shifted the plates of earth beneath the water and raised some of them up. He stepped upon one, and as He looked around, He thought that things were progressing nicely, and that it was good.

The Earth was barren and dry and not exactly easy on the eyes, so He unfurled life upon it, green growing things that breathed in the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and drew energy from the star they circled. God thought it might be nice to be able to see His Creation from above as well as up close, so He created the firmament and placed Heaven within it, formed from seven circles and infinite in scope.

Next He placed life in the water, this time life that was mobile, darting back and forth. The sky above him was dazzling and blue, and He formed creatures that could inhabit it too, ones with feathered wings that allowed them to sweep through the air. They seemed happier with their fate than the creatures in the water, or at least they seemed more readily able to express their joy at existence.

God decided He liked knowing that His creatures were enjoying His Creation, so He brought forth creatures on the land as well. He left the shadows of some of them under the ground. This was not to test the faith of Man, as would later be remarked; rather, God just thought it would give anyone digging around a pleasant surprise, and something interesting to look at besides soil.

At this point God’s imagination was beginning to reach its limits, and He was also beginning to feel a little like He’d enjoy some proper company, so next He created a creature made in His own image. He fitted it with wings so it too could feel the joy of the birds of the air, and imbued it with a share of His own power so that it might Create alongside Him.

The first one He formed, creating it from the firmament itself, He fit with two sets of wings and called Michael, ‘one who is like God.’

Michael was confused at first, but then immediately dazzled by Creation. God said he was free to do as he wished, but instructed him to look after Creation. God created more angels to help him, whole choirs of them, sculpting each one by hand from the firmament. It took a long time, but He enjoyed it. The angels began exploring Heaven, alternating between it and the Earth, delighted.

They similarly began experimenting with the powers God had granted them, testing their limits and seeing what they could create. Some of them began to write, others to build, and others still to poke around on the Earth in earnest. One of their common amusements was a game they’d invented where they played at sparring with each other, both on foot and in the air. They’d made a proper sport of it, forming different teams each time and tapping each other lightly with blunt wooden sticks to remove them from the game. It was harmless fun, and dreadfully entertaining to watch.

God continued creating the angels, doing so in choirs. Never one to underuse a good idea, He numbered the angels in each choir so as to follow the same mathematical and geometric sequence as the spiral of the petals of His flowers or the shells of His snails.

When He had created the first eight choirs, God formed the seraphim as His closest helpers, fitting each with three pairs of wings, so that they might contain a great deal more power, sevenfold that of the archangels. He did not mean this to create a distinction or a hierarchy among the angels, no more than he intended an angel’s height or the fairness of their skin to give them grounds to think themselves above their brothers and sisters. God created diversity among His angels so that they each might be beautiful in their own way, in the same way He had created diversity among all His other creatures.

He intended to make seven seraphim. God liked things in sevens. Not for any particular reason—He just liked things in sevens.

The seraphim took some time to make, so He spent an entire day on each one, sculpting them from the ether. These would be the last of the angels, at least for now. A perfectly geometric host of angels, arranged in multiples of seven.

The sixth seraph He created He made the most beautiful of all. He had already assigned two angelic powers to each of the planets, but He finished the sixth seraph just as morning broke and decided to call her Venus.

“You shall be the Morning Star,” God said as He put the finishing touches on the third set of wings. “May you light the way.”

God had one last seraph to make, but decided to take a brief break beforehand, because He knew it would be the last angel He would make and He wanted to do it right. He had also just spent six days making the previous six seraphim, and was looking forward to the weekend.

God took a moment to survey the rest of the universe, making sure all things in the cosmos were as they ought to be. The powers were keeping the balance as instructed, and there were a few stray meteors He pushed back in line.

He was inspecting a white dwarf five thousand light-years away when He felt one of His Creations blink utterly out of existence.

It hit Him like a blow.

In the same instant, all of the bright, optimistic futures spread out in the multiverse in God’s mind shrivelled and grew dark. Sin had just been created, and murder and mortality along with it. As the bright universes in the multiverse faded away one by one, God felt His heart grow heavy with anger and loss.

The star God was hovering over exploded, and when its light would reach the Earth, people would look up and point as it flared brighter than the sun, and after another millennium scientists would call it the Crab Nebula.

God returned immediately to the Earth, and as He stepped onto the firmament above it, He found His angels waiting for Him.

Venus—His youngest, His pride and joy, the most beautiful of them all, was sitting before His throne, head bowed and tears dried on her cheeks. Her three pairs of brilliant white wings sagged, hands twined in the hair of the motionless corporation in her lap. She was no longer in a corporation herself, He noticed; the one He had made her had been destroyed. Only one angel had accompanied Venus to the throne of their Father, a cherub with rather poorly-preened wings.

God wanted to demand what had happened, but of course He knew what had happened: Venus had befriended a principality by the name of Ishtyr. They had been experimenting with sigils, a way of writing down the magic God had imbued them with. They had been good friends, and enjoyed participating in the celesparring, but always on the same team, watching each other’s backs.

Then they had created a spell that allowed them to share the same corporation. Ishtyr had joined Venus in hers, and they had gone down to the fields of Earth together to take part in the games, using their shared incorporation to increase their reflexes. But God had not designed the angels’ corporations to withstand the habitation of more than one soul. As the corporation had begun to fail, Venus and Ishtyr had realised what was happening and done their best to separate, but hadn’t been able to reverse the binding in time.

Venus’s soul had overwhelmed Ishtyr’s, and the seraph’s corporation had been destroyed along with the principality’s soul.

It had been innocent. It had been an accident.

“You have sinned,” God stated, standing in front of His throne and looking down at Venus.

“I—I am sorry, Father,” Venus stammered, and God knew that she meant it. “I did not mean—what has happened?”

“You have killed Ishtyr,” God said, feeling very keenly the loss of one of His children. He had made each of His angels by hand, after all. Ishtyr had been good and kind. He had liked the singing of the bluebirds and the white blooms of the lilies, and, above all, the companionship of Venus.

And now he didn’t like anything at all.

“All things were life, but now all things are death,” God stated bleakly; the darkened futures of the multiverse were still heavy in his mind. From here on out, every living creature would die. Mortality was inevitable, and along with mortality came pain and loss and grief. His perfect universe was out of His reach.

God weighed His options, turning over a thought in His head as He came to the only responsible conclusion. “I will have to start over.”

He could not turn back time, because He had created time to flow in one direction, but He could turn the clock forward, bring about a new universe, and start again there. He was unhappy with the prospect—He had just created this world, after all, and He loved it. But His mind was still on the multiverse and the worrying fact that _every single universe_ showed the same horrible fate. There was simply _no way_ _forward_ from here.

“It was an accident, my Lord.” That was the cherub, whom God remembered naming Aziraphale. God recalled that he had invented books rather recently. “I saw it happen.”

“Please,” Venus implored, tears gleaming brightly on her cheeks. “Father—please, can you bring Ishtyr back? He and I—he _is my friend_ , I did not mean to—can you not restore his immortality?”

God looked down at His crying child, moved to pity even as He knew that she had single-handedly doomed all of Creation. But if He was going to remake the universe anyway, He supposed, there was no reason to continue holding His anger against her. What was done could not be undone.

“You have sinned,” God said again, “but you are forgiven.”

Venus dipped her head in gratitude, hands tightening around the body in her lap—Ishtyr’s corporation, vacated when he’d stepped into Venus’s.

“Your corporation has been destroyed,” God stated. “You may have Ishtyr’s.” God didn’t see much point in wasting a perfectly good corporation, and He thought it might be reassuring to Venus to have this reminder of her friend for whatever time remained in this universe. God didn’t know much about psychological trauma.

“Can you bring him back?” Venus asked again, stroking a hand along Ishtyr’s motionless forehead.

“No,” God said, because the spell had destroyed the principality and cast the pieces beyond the mortal world. He could remake him anew, but He didn’t think that was what Venus meant.

“You cannot...make him immortal again? Please?” Venus looked up at her Father, tears still streaking down her cheeks, and He saw the guilt heavy in her eyes.

God considered. He knew He ought to scrap this universe and start over as soon as possible, but though all the futures were dark, there was still light in the universe now. Maybe He would have time for a brief tour of all that He had created before He turned it back to dust. That might take a decade or two of Earth time, so He decided He might as well do what He could to comfort His doomed creations while they still breathed.

“He cannot walk among you again,” God said by way of stipulation, and granted Venus’s request.

God gathered the tattered pieces of Ishtyr’s essence in the Void and formed him into the gatekeeper of the mortality his death had created.

Venus’s head dropped back down and she began crying worse than ever.

“That is all I can do,” God said, and when Venus made no move to leave, the cherub came over and whispered in her ear. She looked upset, but a moment later she faded out of view as Ishtyr’s corporation came to life.

Venus quickly began crying again in this new form, but Aziraphale helped him out of God’s sight.

“Shh, just come this way, Venus,” Aziraphale said to him as he led him away.

“Don’t call me that,” he snapped.

Aziraphale showed the seraph out and then hovered uncertainly near the doorway. God knew there was something on his mind. He could have found out Himself, but He was finding that sometimes it was nice to ask. It would be a bit of a pity to not learn any more things like this from His angels before He returned them all to the fabric of the universe.

“What troubles you, Aziraphale?” God asked, already beginning to plot out His good-bye circuit of the universe in His mind.

Aziraphale took a few hesitant steps towards his Father. “Are you really going to start over? Destroy the universe?” He looked a little terrified at the prospect. Of course he would be, God thought; he would be obliterated in the process.

God took a deep breath, interested by the sensation, and considered whether it was best for the deaths of His children to be ignorant or informed. He would make sure that they were painless either way, sending them out of this world as easily as He had brought them into it. He was still considering whether to offer a comforting lie or the truth when Aziraphale took another short, hesitant step towards Him.

“Nothing’s really changed,” Aziraphale said encouragingly, the anxiety plain in his voice. “We are one less in number, and that is to be…” He searched around for a word. “Regretted? We shall think on it sorrowfully. But the rest of us are still here, and we still love this world. We still want to take care of it, as you instructed us.” The cherub hesitated. “ _I_ still want to take care of it.”

God looked at His faithful angel and felt a pang of regret at the conclusion to this universe He had chosen. It was not Aziraphale or any of the other angels’ fault that Venus had sinned, and yet they all would pay the price. “I am sorry,” God said.

Aziraphale paled, and God knew he had understood the implied answer to his question.

“Truly? But—surely the situation can be salvaged _somehow?_ The universe, the Earth, all of the creatures upon it, large and small—you would unmake _them all?”_

“You will not even know it is happening,” God said as gently as He could.

Aziraphale took another shaky step towards his Father, and his eyes were incredulous and frightened. “Can it not be postponed? There’s so much left to see, so much to do—this world is incredible, and I have yet to experience but a tiny fraction of it—” Aziraphale took another step towards his Father, and some part of him seemed to register that he wasn’t supposed to be that close. There was no official rule against it, but the angels had somehow agreed amongst themselves that a three-metre-minimum distance ought to be maintained from their Creator.

“The future is dark,” God told His angel. “If I allow things to continue, you will know great pain and suffering. It is better this way.”

Aziraphale dropped to his knees, bowing his head in subservience. “Please,” he said. “Let me beg your mercy for this beautiful universe you’ve created.”

God sighed worriedly. He did not like it when His creatures prostrated themselves before Him like this. God appreciated the occasional word of thanks now and then, but He had created His angels as companions and helpers, not servants.

“If there is anything I can do to persuade you,” Aziraphale said, desperation colouring his tone, “or if there is any service I can render—my Lord, I am willing. Just please spare this world and all those upon it. If we mean anything to you.”

God gazed down at Aziraphale, the angel who had spent his life thus far showing kindness to his brothers and sisters while entertaining an insatiable curiosity about every tiny facet of Creation. He had invented books as a way to compile all of the information he had learned, hoping that it might facilitate his brothers and sisters’ understanding. He loved the Earth very much, God saw, and he was still so full of wonder. A wonder that God had long since ceased to feel in Himself.

“Please,” Aziraphale said again, head still bowed, and his voice was strained. “There is so much beauty left to see.”

God looked down at Aziraphale’s bowed head and sighed.

“All right,” He relented. Maybe He had created the universe, God supposed, but that didn’t mean it was His to dispose of whenever He pleased. He had created life upon the Earth, and now He had to listen to what it was saying. “If you’re certain.”

Aziraphale looked up at his Father in astonishment, hope flitting across his face. It was the first time anyone had ever felt that emotion before, and God thought it was lovely.

“Truly?”

God nodded and opened His mouth to tell Aziraphale that whatever happened next was on his head, but before He could vocalise His thought He was abruptly cut off as Aziraphale pulled his Father into the first hug God had ever received.

_“Thank you.”_

 

~~***~~

 

The following morning, the Earth turned and the star Sol grew visible on the horizon, the rays of light refracting through the atmosphere and bringing light and colour to banish the darkness of night.

God watched the sunrise from Earth, standing on the edge of a woodland cliff as brilliant colours unfurled across the sky. Birds sang sweet, joyful songs, the plants turned their leaves towards the light, and the tiny living things in the ground burrowed deeper through the soil.

And God knew that Aziraphale had been right. God had spent much time lately in the upper reaches of Heaven and among the cosmos, where all was beautiful but lifeless. He had been willing to sacrifice the nebulae and pulsars for a new universe, because recreating their beauty would be easy, but He had underestimated the importance of the life He had brought forth on His planet.

Certainly He could have created life on another planet in another universe, but it would have been the height of hubris to suggest that His thoughts on the fate of the universe mattered more than the creatures He had made to think for themselves. It was as much their universe as it was His, after all.

God would have wiped out this universe in the blink of an eye, but then there would never have been this beautiful sunrise, and the birds singing in the air would never have raised their voices to show how delighted they were to be in the world. Aziraphale had seen value where God had seen none, and it was clear whose wisdom had been the greater. Maybe if He spent more time upon the Earth, God mused, He would learn to truly appreciate it as Aziraphale did.

God would limit His interference from now on, He decided. He had given His children freedom of thought, and they would be the ones to shape the Earth’s future from here on out.

 _But_ , God still loved His children, and He knew that what He was proposing was no better than abandoning them completely. They would still suffer and the universe would still end in darkness. God was willing to let His children exercise their free will and shape their future, but He was not willing to send them down a path He knew was doomed to end in misery.

So God decided to perform one last action before He took a step back, and play the only card He had left to play. It would be His best attempt to save all of His children from the fate Venus and Ishtyr had inadvertently thrust upon them.

Every universe in the multiverse now ended in darkness, but the multiverse was just a collection of all possible outcomes based on existing data, so God decided that His last action would be adding one more data point.

He had one seraph left to create, and as God set about pulling together the particles He would need, He saw the multiverse shifting in front of Him. And then, all at once, a very small handful of potential futures sprang into being with endings bathed in light. If He created the seraph correctly, God saw, there would be a way to banish the darkness from the end of the universe.

God looked closer and saw with horror what would be required. There would be six thousand years of death and pain and great injustice before the darkness would be banished, but, in the end, Venus would be saved and mortality’s blow softened.

God inspected the tracks these universes might take, and felt a tear run down His cheek.

This future was not at all what God had intended. More of His children would sin, and millions would be consigned to the blank eternity of death before the coming salvation arrived.

To begin with, He would create another species, again made in His image, but without those things that had caused the angels to sin—no corporations or heavenly powers, and no ethereal wings with which to hold those powers. These new creatures would be made without sin, so God would set them above the angels.

Venus had turned from Him. Inhabiting the corporation of her dead friend, she would twist the name God had given her, calling himself Lucifer, the light-bringer, bringing what he saw as the Light to his brethren. He would sow dissent—this was unavoidable, in any of the universes spread in front of God. The seraph had already started, soul twisted with grief and guilt and anger, and his will was his own.

Lucifer would tempt the angels to disobey, some of them would follow him, and Heaven would be rent in two. Half of Heaven would Fall. God would not cast them out; they would cast themselves out, losing their link to Heaven and God’s love as they turned their hearts away. All, that was, except one. This new seraph God was creating would Fall with them, though among the Fallen his sin would be the least. He would Fall, and not understand what he had done wrong.

He could not be a seraph when he Fell, though; if he knew the full extent of his powers, he would destabilise the social order of the Abyss and would never be sent to Earth as a result. And it was absolutely essential that he be sent to Earth, because after he Fell he needed to meet Aziraphale.

God summoned Aziraphale to His throne, and asked him if he had meant that he would do whatever was necessary to save the Earth and all who walked upon it.

“Anything,” Aziraphale replied, bowing his head. “Thank you for your mercy, Father.”

“It may not be mercy,” God said, “but it shall be as you wish.”

And God touched Aziraphale on the shoulder and erased all that had passed from his mind, and then returned him to his brothers. If he retained his memories, he would begin to suspect something exactly four centuries from now, and would stop talking to the seraph God sent to him.

To facilitate their meeting, the seventh seraph would gain entrance to the Garden via the Eastern Gate and tempt humanity to Fall as half of Heaven had.

God sought for a way to avoid the ruin of another of His creations, but it was simply unavoidable if He wished to save Venus and the other Fallen angels. This future in the multiverse was incredibly tenuous, and God saw with dismay that much of the suffering that would be endured was not only unavoidable but _necessary_ for events to continue to play out as they must.

Humanity had to Fall, God saw, for two reasons. Firstly, the bitterness needed to be wiped from the seraph’s heart as he realised that God had not intended for this to take place, and that revelation could only be achieved by eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Secondly, it was an unfortunate truth that the angels would never fully understand the concept of free will on their own. Humanity, on the other hand, would revel in it. The angels’ Fall would teach them the folly of choice, but humanity’s Fall would teach them the value of it. For the angels, both Fallen and true, to understand that their will was free, they would need to see the concept exercised by others. To this end Aziraphale and the Fallen seraph would spend time upon the Earth. Thousands of years would pass, because it was imperative that they learn free will and not only bridge the impossible gap between Heaven and the Abyss, but grow genuinely dear to each other.

There would be an attempt at the Apocalypse, and this would push them even further together—without this catalyst, neither of them would be brave enough to dare to grow closer.

But in the millennia it took to accomplish this vital goal, Heaven and the Abyss would have become even more antagonistic and stuck in their ways.

The only thing that would thaw Lucifer’s bitter heart would be the forgiveness of the one person who could not easily give it: Ishtyr. All mortals lost their memories of Death, which meant that such a message would have to be carried by an immortal who had died and returned to Earth.

Such a scenario was so incredibly unlikely that there was exactly one way to do it, and it involved the Tree of Life and a soul bind. This required that the two parties be incredibly devoted to each other and in a situation where sharing their souls would be necessary. There were very few scenarios in which this would come to pass, and only one resulted in the ultimate salvation of the Abyss.

To this end Aziraphale would have to Fall, die a mortal death, and be rescued from Heaven by the seraph, who had returned to grace himself. This could not pass in a timely fashion, however, because at each step they needed to be driven to the point of desperation before they became willing to take the necessary measures. Simply returning the seraph to grace required that Aziraphale die a slow, horrible death, because only in that fashion could he learn to finally leave behind the last of his learned wickedness and fully embrace the love in his heart. And his return to grace would ignite a terrifically important spark of free will across Heaven and the Abyss.

The seraph would have to lose himself after rendering Aziraphale immortal because only then would Aziraphale risk venturing into the Abyss to find something that could save him. After the seraph died, received the message from Death, and returned, he would blaze through the Abyss to rescue Aziraphale, tearing a great gash in the fabric of Hell in the process. This, combined with the message the seraph brought to Lucifer, would collapse time-tested power structures as the Fallen began to hope again. And with their eventual return to Heaven, so too would the human souls who had been damned for thousands of years be saved.

At no point would God’s hand be heavy upon them; they would make their own decisions every step of the way. God saw all the options in the multiverse, and He chose this one, but that did not mean He made it. And even with the utmost care taken in His sculpting of the seraph, the multiverse was ever-shifting and infinite. Free will was not an illusion, and the universes spread in front of Him were just options in an ever-shifting sea of possibilities, but it was possible—just _barely_ possible—that things might yet end well. But at any point any of the critical players could deviate from the path God wished they would follow, and doing so would ensure that the universe stayed swathed in darkness.

There were a few hitches still in the plan, one of which was that the seraph would not be able to escape the warding the archangels and the Metatron would place around the Tree of Life. This would be an act of free will by them, not an order from God, and He would not interfere with their free will.

So as God sculpted the seraph before Him, He shaped him first into a serpent. This would give him another form, one which required less energy to sustain than even his angelic form, and it would be enough to allow him to escape the warding with the fruit of the Tree of Life. God remembered how He had formed Aziraphale and moulded the seraph so that they would be perfect companions to each other. Much of their attraction and devotion would be made by their own hands and hearts, but God did not see any point in stacking the odds against them.

God formed him into a seraph next, filling him with His Light and imbuing him with as much courage and love as He could. He would be the salvation of all of Creation, but he would not feel himself to be a hero. Everything he would do, God knew, would be for his own sake or that of Aziraphale, but it would be enough. Other angels, both Fallen and not, would be the flames of the fire of Redemption, but everything hinged on the perfect spark. God shed a tear as He formed the seraph, because He knew that this angel would suffer dearly to redeem the sins of those who had come before him, and whose trespass he was innocent of.

The universe God saw before Him now would be exceptionally cruel not only to the creature He was currently forming, but also to Aziraphale, who had offered his services in good faith. But, if everything went well, and the thousands of moving parts fell into place—perhaps with a little nudge from Himself now and then, just to keep things on track, if circumstance and not deliberate free will conspired against them—and if Aziraphale and the seraph used their free will as the projection of the multiverse seemed to think they would…

Then perhaps the ends would justify the means.

God decided He would take extra pains to arrange things so that the two of them could be together, in the end. It would be the least He could do. They would feel purposeless, powerless, and abandoned, and the entire world would suffer for millennia, but this was one of the very few paths that ended well, and of those paths this one was the kindest.

He thought that He should apologise to the seraph when it was all over. He would suffer dearly, but the world would be so much better for it. And, if everything unravelled smoothly, then he and Aziraphale would be happy, in the end.

God finished sculpting His final seraph and carefully tucked two of his sets of wings away, locking away his extra powers. He would believe himself to be of the choir of thrones, and this would keep him safe.

God stepped forward, setting a hand on the shoulder of His newest Creation, and named him.

“Phanuel,” God said, remembering the emotion He had first seen upon Aziraphale’s face, “you are my hope.”

And He blessed him and sent him into Heaven.

**Author's Note:**

> The response to the opening quote being, of course, that God prays for Satan, and has never stopped doing so.
> 
> I’ll now direct you back to _The Inheritance of Eden_ to pick up with [Chapter 24](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11408583/chapters/26171433) and continue with the main narrative.
> 
> ______________________
> 
> Some notes on astrophysics, which I know too much about:
> 
> I hope you enjoyed my attempt to marry a strict six-thousand-year religious timeline with our modern understanding of astrophysics and the history of the universe!
> 
> The two forces mentioned at the beginning are gravity and inflation / dark energy. If gravity is the stronger of the two, the universe will collapse back together in a sort of reverse-Big-Bang called the Big Crunch. The alternative is that inflation is stronger, in which case the universe will expand indefinitely until entropy (the tendency of all things to disorder) has its way and all thermodynamic free energy is removed from the universe (ie. all “useful” energy is converted into thermal energy, which is useless when every particle in the universe is the same temperature), meaning that the universe will end in heat death AKA the Big Freeze ( _Or_ , if we get extra lucky, inflation increases exponentially and all particles in the universe are torn apart in the Big Rip! Oh boy!). The third option, as happens in this case, is that gravity and inflation are perfectly balanced, meaning that the universe will never end (until entropy has its inevitable way). Fun fact: our best guess is that we’re in a balanced universe, except that if dark energy keeps accelerating we’re all gonna freeeeeeeeze.
> 
> The line about the universe “going a little pear-shaped” for a moment is a play on words. Things went “pear-shaped” in the British sense of the word meaning “went awry,” and it’s also a literal reference to Stephen Hawking’s assertion that the universe’s past light cone is “pear-shaped” (though it’s really more onion-shaped if you ask me…).
> 
> The bit where God gives the edge of our galaxy an extra push is meant to reconcile problems regarding the rotational curves of galaxies. The outer edge of galaxies like our own actually rotate considerably faster than can be accounted for by the visible matter (ie. stars and gas and stuff), which has led astrophysicists to consider the existence of “dark matter halos” around galaxies. A halo of extra matter around the exterior of the galactic disc would account for the increased velocity, and we call it “dark” matter because we can’t see it (ie. it’s not part of those stars and gas and stuff). This is one of the strongest arguments for the existence of dark matter. Of course, it could be that we just don’t understand gravity properly. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> The reference to gravity and the fourth dimension is an allusion to the curved, three-dimensional nature of spacetime. Basically, spacetime “bends” around objects with a large mass, like stars. Picture an orange in a bowl, where the orange is a star and the bowl is the curved spacetime (if spacetime didn’t curve, the bowl would be a flat plate). This causes all sorts of things that normally move in straight lines (like light) to appear to “curve” around massive bodies as they fall into the edge of the body’s let’s-call-it-a-gravity-pit, curve around the body for a while, and then escape the gravity pit to resume their normal course. From the point of view of whatever is falling into the bowl / gravity pit, it’s going in a straight line, but because the bowl is curved, it actually follows a curved path. This is a legitimate phenomenon; during solar eclipses, we can see stars near to the edge of sun’s disk that are physically behind the sun/moon and should be out of our line of sight. Neat, huh? The depth of the “gravity pit” depends on the mass of the object in question, which means a black hole creates a very deep “pit” with steep walls; this is called a gravity well. And things fall in and just can’t get out!
> 
> All the stuff about the Crab Nebula is perfectly true; we have records everywhere from Japan to New Mexico of what the Chinese called a “guest star,” which was the supernova of the star that would become the Crab Nebula and Pulsar today. The supernova first appeared in 1054 and was visible in the sky for about two years.


End file.
